Other New York Yearly Meeting prison transition projects

We have a couple of documents from the New York Yearly Meeting detailing various inmate transition projects. The two I will discuss in this post are the Home Free Project, founded in 1979, and two assistance funds meant to loan or grant money to aid prisoners both incarcerated and recently released. These documents are from 1984. Obviously these two sets of sources fit into the previously discussed section on prison transitions that includes RECONSTRUCTION.

We have one mailing from the New York Yearly Meeting Prisons Committee detailing the Home Free Project, as well as an illustration detailing the goals of the project. It stemmed from a project of putting meetings for worship in prisons, and aims to then assist those prisoners active in the Quaker community during their incarceration.

Home Free is based in employment and education, as well as counseling inmates and their families. I think this program is particularly interesting because of its focus on Quakers or meeting participants. Other programs I have looked out do not have this specific focus, indeed, seem to be more open and willing to give support regardless of religion. However, I think with its Quaker focus Home Free was probably able to more sharply direct its aid, and perhaps to attract its previous charges to work within the organization.

The two assistance funds have a similarly Quaker slant, specifying that recipients of aid must at least have been in contact with a reputable Friend who will vouch for them. While this is certainly pragmatic, it does not seem in keeping with some of the blanket idealism expressed in other sources, such as the paper on Restorative Justice. I find this interesting.

What I think is most useful to take away from the two documents on assistance funds is the idea of solidarity over charity. In other words, the drafters of both documents are careful to point out that this aid is given in the hopes of a better community and a better world, and that that is the duty of those with privilege. They do not pass judgement in the documents for the crimes committed, and in doing work to reduce a hierarchy that obviously exists between a religious donor and an ex-inmate recipient.